


Finding Marjorie

by Merya



Series: Guilt and Solace [3]
Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age - All Media Types, Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: Death, Dreams and Nightmares, F/M, Family, Fire, Guilt, Hurt, Minor Character Death, Survivor Guilt
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-06-02
Updated: 2015-06-02
Packaged: 2018-03-25 22:11:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,649
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3826852
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Merya/pseuds/Merya
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The first of many traumatic experiences in the life of Sarah Trevelyan.</p><p>Sarah loved her sister's nightly fireworks. They warmed her and kept their shared room from becoming too dark. But fireworks are deadly things, even if they're the stuff of dreams.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Finding Marjorie

**Author's Note:**

> So, I tagged this fic as female trevelyan / cullen rutherford relationship. simply because the only longer fic I've written with Sarah, featured some of that relationship. 
> 
> Also, this fic contains fire and death by fire, so if you've got issues with that sort of thing, don't read it.

Sarah woke with a start. It was still dark, the moon shining through the curtains of her room, creating a milky-white patch of light under her window. Her cover was warm and snuggly, but Rufus, her teddybear, had fallen to the floor during the night. She swung her legs over the edge of her bed and slid to the floor, her bare feet warmed by the lingering heat of the wooden planks. Bending down, her fingers searched under the bed for the soft fur of Rufus. As her fingers closed around his arm, something moved at the edge of her vision, and Sarah quickly turned around, thinking that maybe she would be lucky enough the see one of Nan's fairies? Following the little glint of light, she stopped abruptly when she realized what it was.  
Marjorie was dreaming fireworks again. Disappointed, Sarah turned back towards her own bed. Marjorie's fireworks were pretty, but they weren't fairies. And she'd seen them before. This night they were especially pretty.  
Green clouds interlaced with violet diamonds were bubbling back and forth and wrapping themselves around rays of sunlight that seemed to appear from thin air. Snoring, Marjorie turned on her side. And the fireworks above her head mimicked the motion, rolling in the air.  
Watching the fireworks and hugging Rufus tightly Sarah drifted off to sleep.

They never spoke of the fireworks. Sarah wasn't sure, if it was something everyone did, and she didn't want to appear stupid to her clever and somewhat aloof big sister. She did'nt tell any of the others either. What if everyone would laugh at her? No – she'd just keep watching her sister's dancing lights. They made her happy, and she loved how they warmed and lighted their room when she woke in the night. Sarah's nights were never really dark.

\---

Her parents had important guests. She knew this because she had been told in no uncertain terms, that if she acted out during dinner, she would find herself locked in her room without supper. Sarah was hungry, and she had tried to behave. It wasn't her fault that she was clumsy, dropping forks and knives. It was difficult to hold them in her hands – they were too big. It wasn't her fault that it felt as if her legs were filled with little ants crawling up and down under her skin, and only apeaced if she swung her legs under the table. One time she swung her legs so wildly, that she nearly knocked her chair over. Janus caught it, and righted it before she fell off, putting a finger to his lips and winking at her. She grinned back at him. It was lucky that she was seated so far down the table that mother and father didn't notice her mishap. Neither did Simon or Marjorie, both of whom would have ratted her out. Not long after Nan had come to pick her up and prepare her for bed.  
”Say good night to your parents” she said in her old, gravelly voice, and Sarah had walked up between the tables until she stood in front of her parents. She curtsied as well as she could and bade her parents, their guests and her siblings a good night. Her mother narrowed her eyes at the clumsy curtsy, but her father smiled warmly and send her to her bed with a kiss.  
”Tell her a story tonight Nan” he said with a smile on his lips. ”She's been good this evening”.  
Nan nodded and Sarah grinned widely at her father before following the old woman out of the room.  
Nan tucked her in nice and warm, and told her stories of the fairies that are invisible to human eyes until she fell asleep to the soothing voice of Nan's humming a fairy song.

That night it was the screaming that woke her up. She clawed her way out of a nightmare, but when her eyes finally opened the screaming continued.  
Marjorie's bed was engulfed in flames, and Marjorie sat on the mattress screaming, hysteria tingeing her voice. Sarah sat frozen on her bed, staring at her big sister caged in by green, violet and orange flames.  
The door banged open and Nan ran into the room wearing nothing but a night shift and a night cap. She grabbed the cover from Sarah’s bed and threw it at the flames, hitting the flames with the rose-embroidered cover. The flames simply grew taller and taller, almost reaching out towards Nan. One flame formed a hand and grabbed Nan around the arm, dragging her into the inferno of flames. Nan's screaming joined that of Marjorie’s. In a closed off part of her mind Sarah slowly thought that this was the strangest and most desperate choir she would ever hear.

Frozen, Sarah saw how Nan's clothes caught fire. How Nan pushed herself through the inferno, screaming and screaming and screaming. Flesh sizzling and blackening, her long white hair, that she had always kept in a braid around her head, burning with a bluish glow. Reaching Marjorie's bed she collapsed to her knees her blackened and shrivelled hands flailing blindly towards Marjorie, until she found an arm which she grabbed onto.  
The flames seemed to dance up over Marjorie's arm, sizzling her flesh. As Nan collapsed onto the floor, her screaming finally having stopped, Marjories eyes rolled back in her head and she fell back onto the bed. The moment her eyes closed, the flames that engulfed her bed disappeared, leaving only a blackened bedframe, scarred floor, and the crumbled form that had been Nan just a few minutes ago. The air of the room was filled with the sweet smell of grilled meat and burned wood. 

The door flew open again and her father ran into the room closely followed by Simon, Janus,and a guardsman. They stopped dead when they saw the scene in front of them, her father slowly approaching the blackened bed and the body at it’s foot. He stopped at the edge of the scorched wood, and touched a hand to it’s surface. “It’s cool” he said, surprise lacing his voice. He turned around then and his gaze fell on Sarah sitting on her bed holding Rufus close to her chest. “What happened?”

Sarah simply stared past him to the unmoving form of Marjorie. How could she not have burned, when Nan had? The only thing that seemed to be burned was the arm Nan had grabbed.  
Her eyes focused on the scene, taking in the details. The way the scorched wood cracked beneath her fathers boots. The way Marjories chest rose and fell and how tears streamed down her cheeks even in sleep. Her eyes lingered on the burn mark on Marjories arm. 

Cool fingers covered her eyes and turned her face away from the scene. When she could see again, she looked straight into the golden brown eyes of Janus. “What happened sweetpea?”

Sarah simply sobbed, crumbling into his arms as her father moved over and sat on her bed stroking her hair. The guardsman and Simon had gone to fetch the healer. 

The words stumbled out through her lips, almost incomprehensible because of her fierce crying, and not making any sense to her brother and father. “Marjorie… Marjorie’s fireworks.. She… burned…”  
Shutting her eyes against the memory, Sarah tried to tell her father what she had seen, but was cut short by the voice of her mother coming from the doorway, cold with fury.  
“You knew?”  
Sarah didn’t understand what it was her mother asked, and simply stared at her, tears forgotten. Her father continued stroking her hair but realization coloured his eyes, while Janus’ grip on her tightened ever so slightly.  
“She is simply a child Daisy”, her father said, cutting her mother off. “I will not have this discussion now. You know what must be done. Prepare the carriage.”  
Her mother shot her a hateful stare, before exiting the chamber. Not long after, the healer entered the room with two stretchers and 4 guardsmen. They lifted the still unconscious form of Marjorie on to one of the stretchers, and Nan was lifted onto the other. They then left the room without saying a word, her father leaving soon after. 

Janus’ gathered Sarah to him and carried her to his own room lying her down on his bed and holding her as she cried herself to sleep.  
She awoke the next morning alone in the bed, Rufus lying under her chin and Janus lying on the floor. The early daylight filtered in through the windows, making the room glow. 

Marjorie had been gone that morning, and all of Sarah’s things had been moved to a different room. When her mother saw her at breakfast she threw a plate at her, screaming words that burrowed deep into Sarah’s heart.  
“You knew! You knew! We could have…. Why didn’t you say anything?... It’s YOUR fault”. 

Sarah didn’t eat anything that morning. 

Her mother didn’t speak to her for the rest of that day. Or the day after. Or the week after. Her mother never held her tight again, hugging her closely and telling her that she loved her. And Marjorie never returned home. 

\---  
24 years later, Sarah awoke suddenly from a nightmare, the screaming following her into her wakened state. She realized hazily that the screaming was her own, and clamped her mouth shut. Looking out her window she saw the green tendrils of Marjorie’s nightmares scarring the sky. The blackened figures from her dream haunting her and seeming to lie in wait in the darkness. They were the blackened forms of the many people she had lost to flames.  
Sarah swallowed her guilt and swung her legs over the edge of her bed in a mirror image of the many sleepless nights of her childhood. There would be no more sleep for her tonight.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading!  
> Please let me know what you think?


End file.
